1. Field
Embodiments herein generally relate to printers and methods of printing and, more particularly, to a printing mode that achieves high monochromatic quality at a low cost per page.
2. Description of Related Art
There are many different printing technologies that are capable of generating hard copy output. Laser and Solid Ink are two different technologies that are commonly used in a networked office environment. Generally speaking, the current cost of printing a color document is higher compared to that of a black and white (monochrome) document. This is true for a number of reasons. First, Laser and Solid Ink print technologies both use primary colors of cyan, magenta, yellow and black in various mixtures to generate all other representable colors. To produce the color black requires the use of only one printed pixel per location. However, many colors take numerous pixels per location to be adequately represented. For example, the colors red, green, and blue can take up to two pixels per location. Therefore, a color print uses more ink or toner compared to a monochrome print. Also, color printers are more complex, have more parts, and the technology is not as mature. Finally, the ink and/or toners are also more expensive to manufacture.
Faster and/or cost-saving print modes such as, draft or fast color print modes, can be incorporated into ink jet printers. However, these print modes are generally associated with reduced quality and are not necessarily always cost-saving. For example, undercoloring techniques, such as that illustrated in U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2002/0196454 of Parker et al., published on Dec. 26, 2002, the complete disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference, have been employed to enhance black print quality in a draft mode. Such techniques use a significant amount of undercolor (i.e., dots of cyan (C), magenta (M), and yellow (Y)) under black (K) in the black and gray images to enhance the print quality. Since the cost of color ink is higher than the cost of black ink, this undercoloring technique increases the cost of monochrome printing.
Therefore, the embodiments discussed below provide a printer and an associated printing method that incorporates a printing mode which can be used to reduce the cost of color printing without significantly reducing the quality of monochrome printing within the same printed page. More specifically, the embodiments below use a value added printing mode that is aligned with the needs of a “monochrome printer with color” user that values monochrome print quality, but can be adverse to high color costs.